Football and jetpacks have a long history together. But what if you actually strapped the jetpacks on the players? That was the idea in this illustration from a 1981 kids' book that promised "zero-gravity" football played in space colonies of the future.

Back in the 1970s and '80s there was a sense that as soon as space travel became commonplace, all our favorite pastimes would have to adapt. The most pressing question for kids of the time wasn't whether they'd get to space or not. It was how would we have the most fun playing the games we love in zero-gravity.

What are sports going to be like in the future?
Will people thrill to the sight of others
exerting themselves to the utmost, or will
computers take over? The answer is probably
that both things will happen. It's very likely
that people will always want to gather at
sports stadiums to watch their home teams in
action. But computers may also excite us
with amazing new kinds of sports.

The electronic computer games we play
now could become popular spectator sports
in the future. They would not be seen on
television screens but in midair! Using the
techniques of holography, a way of producing three-dimensional images that can float
above the ground, the games could take place
in vast arenas or stadiums before many
thousands of people. Imagine a Space Invaders tournament of the future. Teams of
players sit in the arena, handling the controls
of the computers and lasers which generate
the holographic images. With a blast of music
or roar of sound, ranks of spaceships belonging to one team appear to dive toward the
stadium. The other team's ships take off and
battle with the invaders high above the
audience. The game is played at incredible
speed, calling for split-second decisions by
the players. It provides thrills galore.

Another apparently superhuman sport will
be played by people themselves in the future.
Out in space colonies or space stations, there
will be zero-gravity zones where everything is
weightless. Everyone there will float through
the air, just as astronauts do in space.
Imagine a weightless kind of football in three
dimensions, with six fields, or pitches,
marked out by laser lines in the shape of a
cube. Inside, the players zoom in all directions, using tiny portable compressed-air
motors to propel themselves after the ball.
There are six goal areas, one in the middle of
each field! However, one thing is the same as
football now — collisions are just as painful!

We're still quite a ways from playing the space sports of tomorrow. And further still from zero-gravity football. One imagines that the NFL has enough to do putting house in order here on Earth before it starts seeing concussions on the final frontier.